THE WINNING EDGE

Dawson's Dynamic Decisions

by Dana Smith

Making correct choices is what makes a life -- a professional life, a personal life, a poker life. If you want to prolong your sojourn at the gaming tables, Roger Dawson's got a winning formula.

Dawson has never taken a Card Player cruise, but he's been on plenty of others. As the official ship's photographer for cruises around the world, the native Britisher docked in exotic ports from Singapore to Rio. But only one captured his imagination and became a driving force in his life: New York City. His decision to move from London to America was only the first in a series of dynamic decisions that led him to become one of the world's top motivational speakers and the author of Confident Decision Making, an audio-cassette album that teaches you "how to make the right choice every time," its sub-title.

First, he suggests you analyze your style of decision making by fitting yourself into one of four categories:

(a) Pragmatic. You want the bottom line. With your short attention span, you're concerned only about useful information. You are assertive, time-management conscious, and usually come to conclusions quickly, based on the facts.

(b) Analytical. Because you like details, you're always looking for more information. With your long attention span, you make your decisions slowly and base them on facts. You are less assertive than the pragmatist.

(c) Amiable. You want everybody to be happy and comfortable. Less assertive, you make decisions slowly and base them primarily on emotion. Your attention span is long.

(d) Extrovert. "Let's have fun!" is your motto. You're a socializer with a short attention span. But you're more assertive than analyticals and amiables, and you make your decisions quickly, basing them on emotion.

No one personality type is superior to the others, but knowing which kind of decision maker you are can help you come to better conclusions. For example, if you're a pragmatic or extrovert, you "should realize that you normally jump to decisions and that you can learn steps to slow down a little," Dawson says. "If you're amiable or analytical, you can discover a process that will take you right to the heart of the matter so you can avoid becoming bogged down by facts or emotional struggles."

Try analyzing five major decisions you've made, some that worked and a couple that bombed. Then find the common elements that went into each one to help you to see how your personality style affects your choices.

All good decisions are based on information: the more accurate it is, the better your conclusions. But several snags can tie your decisions in knots: Dawson calls them "information drifts." Using a typical poker game as a reference, see how many of these info-drifts have led you down the wrong path:

(1) Availability. The more you're aware of something, and the more readily available the information is to you, the more you give it emphasis that it doesn't deserve.

(2) Experience. You see things primarily in terms of your personal, professional or poker experience.

(3) Conflift. We all have a natural tendency to reject information that conflicts with our basic beliefs.

(4) Recall. It's easier to remember information about things that are familiar to you.

(5) Selectivity. Since we can't remember everything about everything, we screen out information that doesn't interest us.

(6) Anchoring. If you lack expertise in a specific area, you latch on to or anchor your ideas to the first information you hear, whether it is right or wrong.

(7) Recency. We place greater emphasis on what has just happened than on historical occurrences.

(8) Favorability. You usually look harder for information that supports your beliefs than for data that goes against your preconceived notions.

Referring to the five decisions on your list, did you allow any of these information drifts to influence you?

Now let's look at how your decision-making style and information drifts may deter you from making the best choices in a poker game. In a hold'em game, suppose you're sitting in a front position with a high pocket pair. When the flop comes with three unsuited, non-sequenced low cards, you bet. Two players call your bet, but the Button raises. Do you fold, call, or re-raise?

If you are a pragmatic, accustomed to fast decisions, you could quickly jump on the opportunity to force out the middle-position players with a re-raise. But if you are influenced by a conflict drift, you may be screening out the possibility that Button holds a set of trips. Or if you're an extrovert and in recency drift, your emotions may tell you to punish Button, because he bluffed you out of the previous pot. You could be in an anchor drift, an inexperienced player who remembers that you just read somewhere that high pairs win pots. Maybe you recall that no one raised before the flop except Button, so you believe he probably just holds A-K: favorability drift.

No matter which info-drift or decision-making style is influencing you, if you don't recognize them and make astute adjustments, your decisions can become demonic rather than dynamic. In the sequel to this column, you'll learn techniques for making superior decisions every time: what I call "Dawson's Awesome Decisions."

Coupled with your self-analysis and an awareness of your personal info-drifts, these techniques will give you The Winner's Edge.

Note: This series of motivational articles first appeared in Card Player magazine in the early ‘90s when the author relocated her business, Cardsmith Publishing, to Las Vegas, where she became a columnist and editor for gaming magazines across the country. Currently she is the Executive Editor for Cardoza Publishing.